Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tsotsi, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Apartheid and Racism
Parents and Children
Identity and Memory
Hatred, Sympathy, and God
Habit vs. Choice
Summary
Analysis
Later, Tsotsi will realize that he should have killed Morris before Morris reached the main street. By not killing him then, Tsotsi will experience unexpected consequences, as he did under the bluegum trees. When Tsotsi steps on Morris’s hand—not on purpose—he’s been thinking about his memory of the yellow dog. Morris calling him “whelp of a yellow bitch” at that moment startles and terrifies Tsotsi. Tsotsi, filled with “burning hate” for Morris, decides to kill him, as is “natural in the pattern of his life.”
Chapter 7 goes back in time to retell the events of Chapter 6 while giving the reader access to Tsotsi’s perspective. By connecting Tsotsi’s interactions with Morris to his experience under the bluegum trees—where Tsotsi accepted the abandoned baby—the novel hints that in his interactions with Morris, Tsotsi will somehow break with his old habits and his stereotyped “gangster” identity, just as he did when he began caring for the baby. Yet initially, Tsotsi’s reaction to Morris is in keeping with his stereotyped identity—feeling threatened by Morris’s mention of the mysterious yellow dog, he reacts with kneejerk “hate,” and decides to kill Morris because it fits “the pattern of his life,” or in other words, his “gangster” habits.
Themes
In economic terms, Morris is not a good target for Tsotsi, because beggars don’t make much money. Nevertheless, Tsotsi follows Morris, engrossed by his disability. Eventually he realizes Morris carries himself like the yellow dog of Tsotsi’s memory, which leads Tsotsi to realize that the yellow dog’s back legs were “useless.” Tsotsi becomes fascinated by Morris and so misses opportunities to kill him. Without knowing where his certainty comes from, Tsotsi is certain that Morris’s disability and ostracism from society represent “the final reality to life.”
Just as Tsotsi became invested in the baby when the baby helped him regain a memory, so he becomes strangely invested in Morris when Morris’s disability helps him understand that memory better—something had harmed the yellow dog’s legs. Tsotsi’s feeling that Morris’s disability and oppression represent “the final reality to life,” meanwhile, may hint that Tsotsi is becoming more aware of how apartheid (the ultimate cause of Morris’s accident) has shaped not only Morris’s existence but his own and those of everyone around him.
Themes
Tsotsi has felt this certainty before, though less forcefully. It reminds him of the time Petah, while being escorted by a policeman, called out to Tsotsi while he was playing dice and referred to Tsotsi as David. That incident made Tsotsi realize the “world [is] an ugly place,” an ugliness manifested in Butcher’s hands, Gumboot Dhlamini’s corpse, and the “stunted” trees in the township cemetery. Although this certainty has recurred in Tsotsi’s mind several times, he feels that it’s intensified and embodied in Morris.
Tsotsi does not make explicit what links all the different “ugly” things and incidents he remembers here. While the incident with Petah involved the arrest (and probable beating) of a young Black man by white police, the murder of Gumboot Dhlamini involved an exploited Black mine worker murdered by another socially marginalized Black man (Butcher), and the “stunted” trees in the township cemetery represent the half-hearted, failed attempts of the white-run government to care about the living conditions of Black South Africans. The novel thus implies that Tsotsi is realizing more fully the ugliness of white supremacy and Black oppression under apartheid.
Themes
Tsotsi only identifies that he’s made a mistake in letting Morris reach the main street when he observes Morris stop at the newspaper stand. Morris looks back, seems relieved when he can’t find Tsotsi, and gets scared when he eventually sees Tsotsi again. Tsotsi begins to have a feeling for Morris that is neither hatred nor disgust. Tsotsi recognizes the feeling but cannot identify it. Although aware he is undergoing some strange experience, Tsotsi isn’t sure what it is.
Up to this point, Tsotsi’s habitual, knee-jerk feeling toward other people has been hatred. That he is beginning to feel something other than hatred toward Morris shows that he is breaking with his old habits.
Themes
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When Morris stops before the dimly lit side street, Tsotsi thinks he has the looks and mannerisms of a dog. Tsotsi keeps insisting to himself that he doesn’t know or care about Morris in order to hold off the feeling he can’t identify, which makes him wish Morris wouldn’t move into the side street. When Morris escapes behind the stalled car the two men are pushing, Tsotsi feels “relief.” He realizes that for the first time, he is sympathizing with a person he intends to kill.
This passage includes a major turning point for Tsotsi’s character. Earlier in the novel, when Boston asked whether Tsotsi ever sympathized with the gang’s victims, Tsotsi seemed to deny it—but Boston predicted that one day, Tsotsi would have such feelings and wouldn’t know what to do with them. Now Boston’s prediction about Tsotsi is coming true.
Themes
Tsotsi spies on Morris as he goes into the Bantu Eating House. He buys food from an Indian shop across the street and waits, considering his sympathy for Morris. He concludes that the issue is really Morris’s feeling, not his own—Tsotsi is “realizing something of what the other man felt.” He links his sympathy with Morris to Boston being sick after they killed Gumboot. Though Tsotsi doesn’t fully understand sympathy, he compares it to a sudden illumination that allows him to see Morris. The light of sympathy also allows Tsotsi to see the baby, Boston, and Gumboot. Beyond them, Tsotsi senses “an infinity” and “a brighter, intense revelation.”
Tsotsi thinks of sympathy not only as a feeling, but also as a kind of knowledge that allows him to understand what other people feel and to see them more clearly. His sense of “revelation” and “infinity” in his sympathy nebulously connects sympathy to God, since the word “revelation” has religious connotations—it can refer to knowledge that God bestows directly on human beings—and since “infinity,” or limitlessness, is associated with God in the major monotheistic religions.
Themes
Tsotsi drops the food he has bought and goes searching for his reflection, thinking his appearance must have changed after his internal experiences. He sees his reflection in a store window, but it vanishes when he gets close. When he moves further away, what appears is “the shape of a man,” which could be Tsotsi, Boston, Butcher, or Morris with legs. Tsotsi finds this thought oddly reassuring.
Previously, when looking at the baby, Tsotsi associated the baby with generic “man”—that is, with the group identity “human.” After beginning to sympathize with Morris, he looks at himself in a store window and also sees a generic “shape of a man.” This passage hints that Tsotsi is coming to embrace a true group identity—human—as he begins to reject his old, stereotyped identity of “gangster.” It also hints that sympathizing with others is helping Tsotsi to rediscover his humanity.
Themes
Tsotsi sees the Bantu Eating House’s lights go out and runs around looking for Morris. He laughs when he catches sight of Morris and thinks he has no choice but to continue stalking Morris, despite his “new-found sympathy.” Tsotsi, finding it painful that Morris doesn’t know Tsotsi is still stalking him, starts coughing, whistling, and coming nearer.
Clearly, Tsotsi is confused and conflicted: although he is becoming more aware of his own capacity for choice, he still feels that he has no choice but to act out his “gangster” habits or patterns of behavior and murder Morris. Yet, at the same time, his sympathy for Morris prompts him to try to alert his victim with unnecessary noise.
Themes
After Morris sees Tsotsi, events move faster. When Morris puts the money down, Tsotsi feels that it is a “belittlement” of what has occurred between them—hardly a price that could “buy life”—and so he kicks it. Then Morris starts throwing stones at Tsotsi. Tsotsi longs to call out, “I understand.” Instead, while Morris throws stones, yells curses, and cries, Tsotsi moves ahead of him and waits for him in the darkness.
To “belittle” something is to trivialize it or downplay its value. Ironically, although Tsotsi still plans to murder Morris, his sympathy with Morris makes him feel that Morris’s life is worth much more than money—so much more that Morris’s attempt to “buy” his safety with money actually trivializes or downplays his life’s value. Once again, Tsotsi associates sympathy with understanding: he believes he has come to understand Morris as a result of sympathizing with him.
Themes
When Morris meets Tsotsi in the dark, they wait with a feeling of intense “intimacy.” When Tsotsi asks Morris what he’s feeling, Morris says he feels nothing. Tsotsi asks what he used to feel, and Morris admits that death scared him. Tsotsi asks whether he’s scared anymore. Morris says he has learned from his hands not to be, explaining that before his accident, his hands used to feel life in sexual encounters with women. After his accident, he used his hands like feet, and they stopped feeling. Then, after feeling so much fear while Tsotsi was stalking him, his heart stopped feeling. He concludes: “You have heard a big man cry. It is enough.”
Tsotsi breaks dramatically with his previous habits and his stereotyped “gangster” identity by displaying curiosity about his victim Morris’s life rather than simply killing Morris. Meanwhile, Morris’s statement—“You have heard a big man cry. It is enough”—implies that his crying violates gender stereotypes because it is not something a “big man” should do. Just as Tsotsi is reevaluating his stereotyped “gangster” identity, so Morris suggests that his emotional behavior doesn’t fit a stereotyped masculine identity.
Themes
Tsotsi says the crying “was the worst” of their encounter. Morris asks what else Tsotsi noticed, and Tsotsi tells him he “grunt[s]” and “look[s]” like a dog. He admits he sympathizes with Morris and asks him how he urinates and defecates and whether he has women. Morris explains how he urinates and defecates and says he never has women anymore because they laugh at him. Tsotsi asks Morris what he knows and admits, again, to sympathy. Morris says he would have killed Tsotsi with sticks if he weren’t crippled. Tsotsi mentions that he uses a knife, not sticks, as his weapon of choice.
In this passage, Tsotsi repeatedly tells Morris that he sympathizes with him—the repetition implies that Tsotsi’s own sympathy shocks him and suggests that, perhaps, he wants Morris to explain to him how sympathy arose between them. Although Tsotsi’s comparison of Morris to a dog may seem insulting, the importance of the yellow dog to Tsotsi’s psychology suggests Tsotsi doesn’t mean the comparison (or the personal questions he asks) as an insult. Finally, Tsotsi’s off-hand mention of his knife—which represents his stereotyped “gangster” identity—suggests that while he is outgrowing the gangster stereotype, he still unreflectively identifies with it.
Themes
Morris asks what he ever did to Tsotsi and why Tsotsi is pursuing him after he surrendered his money. Tsotsi says he didn’t want the money and states a third time that he sympathized with Morris. Morris asks why Tsotsi is targeting him, and Tsotsi tells Morris that he’s ugly and asks whether that’s “all.” Morris thinks for a while and says he wants to live. When Tsotsi claims he knows that, Morris tells him that he doesn’t know—that Morris, after many years of despair, is speaking about his desire to live to his own “hard hands,” “ugly face,” and “no legs.” Tsotsi, moved by Morris’s emotion, asks him to explain. Morris says he wants to sense warmth from the pavement, rain, wind, trees, colors, and birdsong. He asks whether Tsotsi understands, and Tsotsi says yes.
Morris rejects Tsotsi’s too-quick claim to understand him by insisting on his life’s unique aspects, including his disabled body. In this passage, then, Morris’s “hard hands,” “ugly face,” and “no legs” represent what is particular to him as an individual—what Tsotsi needs to know if he is really going to understand and sympathize with Morris. Thus, this passage suggests that to genuinely sympathize with someone, you can’t just have vague good feelings toward them—you have to engage imaginatively with the particulars of their experience and their unique individual identity.
Themes
Morris asks why Tsotsi needs to kill him. After a pause, Tsotsi says he doesn’t need to. He repeats it and declares he’ll let Morris live. Morris asks Tsotsi’s age. Tsotsi says he doesn’t know but plans to figure it out. Morris, looking at Tsotsi, can only see “the shape of a man” and can’t remember what Tsotsi looked like under the streetlights due to his own fear. Wanting to give Tsotsi a gift, Morris decides to tell him something special: he says that mothers love their children and sing them songs. Tsotsi denies that mothers do this and walks away. Glancing back, he sees Morris gathering the money Tsotsi kicked.
By deciding not to kill Morris, Tsotsi once again breaks with his old habits and stereotyped “gangster” identity. In so doing, he recognizes his own capacity for choice. After this decision, he tells Morris he plans to find out his own age—which shows how, in rejecting his stereotyped identity, he is becoming more interested in his true, individual identity. When Morris looks at Tsotsi and sees “the shape of a man,” it recalls the earlier scene where Tsotsi looked at his own reflection in a window and could see only a generic human shape—suggesting that Tsotsi, in sparing Morris’s life, is embracing the group identity of “human”—or, in other words, recovering his humanity. The strange exchange between Tsotsi and Morris about mothers, in which Tsotsi denies that mothers love their children, may foreshadow some later revelation about Tsotsi’s own mother, whom he cannot remember.
Themes
Tsotsi walks to the township. He keeps trying to stop and think, but his thoughts move so fast—from Boston cutting himself, to the baby, the yellow dog, Morris urinating, and so on—that he can’t make sense of them. Only when he passes out of “an extensive factory area” between the city and the township that looks like a “labyrinth” is he able to think. He sees the moon, thinks it looks the same as last night, and recalls that he received the baby under the bluegum trees only the night before. He tries to order in his mind the events between his receiving the baby and sparing Morris’s life. He wonders whether the past day is an anomaly and whether he will go back to gang life with Butcher, Die Aap, and even Boston.
The very layout of the segregated city—the “labyrinth” of the “extensive factory area”—makes it difficult for Tsotsi to think. This detail suggests that apartheid, the man-made social system represented physically in the segregated city, inhibits people’s ability to think clearly about their lives. It is only when Tsotsi focuses on the natural world, represented by the moon, that he can order his thoughts. When he questions whether he will go back to gang life, he is essentially asking himself whether his habits will overpower his newly discovered capacity for choice.
Themes
Tsotsi concludes the day is not an anomaly but a new beginning—though of what, he isn’t sure. He will continue to care for the baby and try to uncover his memories, starting with the yellow dog. Perhaps most importantly, he has realized that he has the choice to break with the old patterns of his life. Specifically, he has the choice whether or not to kill. He wonders, forcefully, when he first made the choice to kill. Then, he crumples to the ground and sleeps.
This passage marks another major turning point for Tsotsi. Here, he explicitly asserts his power to reject his old, violent habits. He is also deciding to pursue an identity distinct from his former stereotyped “gangster” identity—an identity as a parental stand-in for the baby and as someone with a unique past, here represented by his memory of the yellow dog.
Themes
